Talk:All About : Princess Anna/@comment-74.99.65.62-20170618050315
Yep, I think I’ve finally reached my breaking point with the Frozen tags. I mean, I’ve mostly shrugged off the Tumblr Social Justice Warriors (is the film problematic on some levels? Yep. Should we talk about it? Absolutely. But it doesn’t mean anyone who likes it is an unequivocal racist or that it’s a total affront to humanity). But when I see someone, with a completely straight face, identify themselves as a writer and post about Kristoff being nearly identical to Gaston (and treating Anna like an incompetent child), Anna having no motivation as a character except “thinking about boys,” and complain about “the lack of realistic character development,” my brain just can’t process that depth and purity of wrongness. …I’ve got to rant a little, so I’m going to cut this. Look. I’m a writer. I’ve been writing my whole life. Went to undergrad for writing, went to grad school for writing, teach writing for a living. Writing is my raison d'etre. Speaking objectively, here’s what I think Frozen did wrong from a writing standpoint: *The climax was very, very rushed — from the time Kristoff brings Anna back to Arendelle, the film just takes off at a breakneck pace, and it would have benefited from further length and refinement in the third act. *“Fixer Upper” was a narrative and tonal break that was more than a bit jarring and seemed misplaced given the comparatively serious tone the film had developed by the time of its inclusion. *The Duke was extremely underdeveloped as a red herring, and seemed to be almost a caricature when compared to the other characters (this was likely intentional, but still rubbed me the wrong way as a writer). *Although Frozen is absolutely Anna’s story, Elsa is written and developed as such a layered, conflicted character that she could have benefited from a few more scenes (and I say that as someone who actually prefers Anna to Elsa). So was the story flawless? No. But show me a story that is. Writing is the product of people, and people are messy, with flaws and thoughts and feelings and a lifetime of personal experiences that inevitably find their way into a narrative. And the reason that Frozen succeeds in terms of its writing, particularly in terms of characterization, is because it understands that, embraces it. The film is populated by a cast of imperfect, conflicted characters with carefully-realized motivations and desires. Are they essentially archetypes of a sort? Of course. We’re working in a genre (fairytales) that's defined ''by archetypes. But Frozen spends its entire running time critiquing and deconstructing the living hell out of them, and in doing so provides further depth and nuance to its characters. When I’m reading, whether for my own pleasure or for work, I consider a character a success if I can see their emotions, if I can understand what motivates them, if they have a clear personality, flaws, strengths, and are, in a word, ''dynamic. Good characters move the plot, interact with it, are changed by it, in realistic and believable ways. The “big four” human characters in Frozen (Anna, Elsa, Kristoff, and Hans) pass that test with flying colors. Anna is motivated by love and loneliness, a pure and unwavering desire to be close to her sister, and an unfettered optimism that renders her more than a bit naive and vulnerable to exploitation and harm (and in Frozen, unlike in most Disney films, she pays dearly for it). Elsa is motivated by fear and self-hatred, playing the role of the “other,” the outcast, desperate to protect her sister from the harm she’s terrified she’ll inflict. She’s conflicted and afraid, even as she tries desperately to keep her emotions under control. Kristoff is something of an interesting foil to Anna, the isolated loner type who also secretly longs for human contact and some kind of emotional connection, but Kristoff is far more socially awkward and reserved, and far less open in his expression of it (unlike Anna, who’s more than happy to express her desire for closeness with the first person who pays her any mind). And Hans… Hans is a true chessmaster, possessing the perfect Prince Charming facade, a handsome face and magnificent manipulation skills concealing ruthless ambition. In a flat story, a predictable story, a lazily-written one, we would have gotten Anna as the damsel in distress, Hans as the knight in shining armor whose kiss rescued her from a freezing death, Elsa as the wicked queen, and Kristoff as the plucky comic relief who guides the protagonist to the heart of the story. Instead, we get a damsel who saves herself AND her loved ones; a dashing prince who brutally subverts every aspect of the archetype; a deeply-conflicted queen with a good, if damaged heart and a desperate desire to avoid harming anyone; and a gruff, socially-awkward loner who shakes off the rust and re-learns what it means to care for someone, and that humanity isn’t something inherently distasteful and untrustworthy (and, despite being cast as the romantic male lead around the second act, doesn’t save the girl). Anna isn’t motivated by her imagined love for Hans in the first act, nor by her burgeoning love for Kristoff in the third. Everything, absolutely everything she does is for her sister. It’s the defining aspect of her character, and it’s made clear and obvious from her first on-screen appearance and throughout the film as a whole. Likewise, Kristoff is not an analogue to Gaston (although Hans definitely is, as I’ve previously discussed here). He doesn’t mock or talk down to Anna; his early interactions with her (the ones that most people cite in their criticisms) are informed by a distinct lack of social awareness and slight exasperation with Anna’s total obliviousness and lack of anything resembling survival skills. He doesn’t particularly know how ''to talk to people after years of only having a reindeer for company, and Anna, in her eager enthusiasm, is completely unprepared for survival in the wilderness and could very likely kill herself or ''both of them if she doesn’t listen to Kristoff (who is not treating her like she’s incompetent, but rather asserting his very real and understandable authority in what is his domain, and very, very far from hers). If I wrote a character like Kristoff (staid rural man of few words, self-sufficient, no-nonsense) and placed him in the scenarios he encounters in the film, especially early on, that’s exactly how I’d expect him to realistically act. Basically, you can criticize Frozen’s characters for being flawed, for acting in imperfect ways, but that’s what people are like. And good characters? Are. just. like. real. people. They’re conflicted. They get frustrated and make mistakes. But they tend to hold fast to their ideals, seek their desires, and generally behave in ways consistent to their personalities. Which is exactly what the cast of Frozen does. Frozen sets up its storyline and its characters within a familiar framework, that of fantasy and fairytale, and proceeds to smash the frame to pieces, something it can only do successfully because of the effective tools it has in its cast of characters. We keenly feel Anna’s loneliness, ache for Elsa’s self-imposed distance, smile at Kristoff’s slowly-revealed warmth and goodness, and burn with rage and an almost personal sense of betrayal as Hans reveals his true colors. As an audience, we only do that with characters we relate to, feel for, and as writers, we can only accomplish that with rounded and fully-realized characters. And that is exactly what Frozen gives us, and why so many of us connect to it just so deeply.